DRAMA MENU - NHB

Book
DRAMA MENU: Glyn Trefor-Jones
NHB
ISBN: 9 781848 422858
Rec Price: 12.99

Review: Alexander Ray Edser

A great companion

All of us who at one time or another have taught drama, run workshops, directed plays know a host of games and exercises, don’t we? We do. And let’s be honest—we all run out of them too. There’s always a place to re-run games we all enjoy, but we struggle sometimes to avoid undesirable repetition.

So Glyn Trefor-Jones’s DRAMA MENU is unbelievably useful; it incorporates virtually 160 games and exercises. Some of them are old favourites—Mirrors and Park Bench for instance—but every reader will find something new and of absolute hands-n usefulness. And this book usefully places the exercises we already know within a valuable wider context.

Trefor-Jones is aiming at drama lessons or workshops, but many suggestions can be used, or adapted and used, with professional actors as fun warm-ups for rehearsals. I know, I’ve used them like this.

Trefor-Jones divides his exercises into Appetizers, Starters, Main Course and Dessert. The categories need no explanation, they move from short warm-up fun games to longer exercises (the Main Course) which require sustained focus over a period and possibly greater preparation. Use of these will aid students’ development.

All information needed to set up each exercise is clearly given. Trefor-Jones also gives us the main themes, for example ‘encourage team working’ or ‘experiment with characters’ and so on. An index grouping the games by type aids your exploration and spotting the right one for the right occasion; and, helpfully, he also incorporates suggestions on how to combine them.

It’s all here; DRAMA MENU will become your companion. And as if that isn’t enough, the book has a companion website keeping the whole thing up to date as a shared enterprise.

2015-07-21 14:47:09